Gillard, Juliain full Julia Eileen Gillard ( born Sept. 29, 1961 , Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, WalesAustralian politician who served as leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP; 2010– ) and as prime minister of Australia (2010– ). She was the first woman to hold either office.

Gillard was born in Wales, but her family joined the wave of post-World War II emigration from Britain to Australia in 1966. They settled in Adelaide, and she grew up in a middle-class environment. She attended the University of Adelaide, where she was an active member of the student government. In 1983 Gillard moved to Melbourne, where she served as president of the Australian Union of Students and continued her studies at the University of Melbourne. She earned degrees in law and arts from the University of Melbourne in 1986, and she joined a private law practice the following year. She was made a partner, specializing in industrial law, in 1990.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Gillard steadily advanced through the ranks of the ALP. From 1985 to 1989 she served as president of the party’s Carlton branch, and from 1993 to 1997 she was a member of the administrative committee of the ALP in Victoria. In 1996 she was appointed chief of staff for Victorian ALP leader John Brumby. She held that post until 1998, when she was elected to serve Lalor, an industrial district west of Melbourne, in the federal House of Representatives.

After the ALP’s disappointing showing in federal elections in 2001, Gillard was elevated to the front bench and given the shadow portfolio of population and immigration. She crafted the ALP’s policy on refugees and asylum seekers, deftly addressing an issue that had cost the party dearly in the 2001 election. Gillard served a short stint as shadow minister for reconciliation and indigenous affairs in 2003, before assuming the shadow health portfolio later that year. She easily won reelection in 2004, and two years later a party caucus elected her deputy to newly installed ALP leader Kevin Rudd.

Public dissatisfaction with Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard led to an overwhelming ALP victory in the 2007 federal elections, and Gillard became deputy to Prime Minister Rudd. In addition, she received the portfolios of employment and workplace relations, education, and social inclusion. As employment and workplace minister, she was instrumental in rolling back laws that had limited the power of labour unions under the Howard administration.

Although Australia weathered the global economic crisis that peaked in 2007–08 far better than many other industrialized countries, the Rudd administration suffered a number of legislative setbacks that led to declining poll numbers for the prime minister. A carbon emissions trading scheme, regarded as a key plank in the Rudd platform, stalled in the legislature in 2009 and was later dropped, greatly damaging Rudd’s credibility, and a proposed “super tax” on mining company profits prompted a fierce backlash from the industrial sector in 2010. Faced with a leadership challenge by Gillard, Rudd conceded that he did not have his party’s support, and he stood down as ALP leader. Gillard was promptly elected ALP leader, and on June 24, 2010, she was sworn in as Australia’s first female prime minister. The following week she negotiated a compromise agreement with the mining companies that reduced the proposed tax from 40 percent to 30 percent.

After less than a month in office, Gillard called for an election to be held on August 21 (see Australian federal election of 2010). The ALP’s easy victory of 2007 was not to be repeated, however; the . The race was the tightest in decades, and in the days after the election, with mail-in and other votes still to be counted, the outcome had yet to be determined. It was clear, though, that neither the ALP nor its main opposition, the alliance of the Liberal Party and the Nationals, had won a an outright majority of seats in the House of Representatives. Both the ALP and the Liberal-Nationals bloc began talks with independent and Green officials, hoping to be able to secure enough backing to form a coalition government. In the event, Labor won support from three independents and the Green member of parliament, enabling it in early September to form Australia’s first minority government since 1940.